


Chapter 15, Book 3

by HeideeKae



Category: Bloodbound (Visual Novels)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst and Feels, Angst and Tragedy, Blood, Bloodbound 3, F/M, Heavy Angst, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23089810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeideeKae/pseuds/HeideeKae
Summary: A family reunion that no one is happy about.
Relationships: Adrian Raines/Main Character (Bloodbound), Adrian Raines/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 9





	Chapter 15, Book 3

**Author's Note:**

> So, on the day of my posting this, Chapter 15 has not been posted by Pixelberry, the studio that writes Bloodbound. But I'm very nervous and excited for it and have been brainstorming possible things that could happen and in my mind, this is one of the worst case scenarios.
> 
> SPOILER WARNING if you have not finished Chapter 14 of Bloodbound Book Three!

The pillars of the New York Opera once seemed inspiring to me. A place of art and life and beauty... but now, it fills me with dread.  
Adrian touches a hand to my shoulder, sending a chill along my skin. “You can do this,” he says, his voice a low whisper brushing against my ear.  
I heft the dagger at my side, poisoned with Demetrius’ blood. My ancient grandfather’s blood.  
“It’s time,” I breathe.  
Adrian tips my chin up and plants a soft but fervent kiss on my lips. I close my eyes and let myself melt into the moment, feeling along his chest and lingering in the warmth of his body. And I tell myself that this will not be the last time I kiss him.  
We lock eyes as we part. “I’ll see you inside,” Adrian says, a breathless promise.  
I nod. “I know what I have to do.”  
I feel his absence keenly as we separate and head in opposite directions. Rheya will be inside and I will have to face her alone. It’s the only way I can keep the rest of them safe: my mind is the only one that Rheya can’t touch. I remember the look in my friends’ eyes when she had them in her grip, ready to cut my throat without any remorse.  
The front door is unlocked. She expects me.  
The Opera is silent and empty, lit with only emergency lights. I’ve never seen it like this before. My footsteps seem impossibly loud, but I make no effort to mask them. Let it draw Rheya’s attention to me, not to Adrian slipping through the shadows.  
I’ve seen the vision a dozen times before. I know exactly where to go. I take the employee doors and navigate to the backstage where shadows stretch over props and costumes and technical equipment like bones and ghosts in the wings.  
I feel her before I see her. She is the penultimate sensation of force and fear, even stronger than before. Her presence casts a thick haze of doubt and unending grief around my senses like a black fog. I shake my head to clear it, to untangle my mind from her effects. My power is sure and strong; it has to be. I won’t survive this if it isn’t.  
Rheya stands on the stage, illuminated by the bright beam of a spotlight.  
I have to force myself to look away from her, to cast my sight over the audience. My heart jumps into my throat as I see the unblinking gazes that stare up at her, rows and rows of obedient servants enamored by Rheya’s psychic power, human and vampire alike.  
“There you are, little girl.” Her voice swims through the air and reverberates with a beautiful power.  
She has them here as a safety net. If I attack her, she won’t hesitate to sacrifice the people before her to grow her own power.  
I take a step forward. The light heats my skin and spreads my shadow like a cloak behind me. Rheya turns her head with languid grace and smiles upon me. I feel a tender, disembodied touch against my mind, but nothing more. A twinge of anger in her features is hidden in shadow, but this close, I can see it. I can feel it.  
“Rheya,” I say, “It doesn’t have to be this way. We can just talk.”  
Her smile doesn’t falter. “You don’t look like you came here to talk.”  
Rheya’s eyes flit to the dagger on my hip, and my hand hovers at the hilt. Then I unfasten the sheathe and hold it out at my side.  
“It’s not what you think.” I let the dagger go, let it crash against the stage.  
Her infuriating smile quirks up in a corner as she eyes me with amusement. “Interesting. You lesser vampire descendants are always so curious. It’s almost amusing.”  
“We don’t have to fight. There are things you don’t know about me... about us.”  
Rheya laughs, a bright sound that ripples across the stage. “You presume to tell me what I do and do not know?”  
“I’m not your enemy, Rheya,” I dare a step closer, hands open and empty. “I’m your family.”  
Her expression shatters like glass. A split-second opening that I can’t risk passing up. I reach out with my psychic abilities and touch Rheya’s mind. She flinches, frozen, as I graze her mental defenses. Her mind feels like an impenetrable fortress, but for a second, she opens the gates to me.  
I don’t want to link with her, not for any longer than needed. I summon the memory of Demetrius, the Tree of Death, and blast the sound on what he’d told me: Iola lived. Iola was the first Bloodkeeper, and her powers were passed down through her bloodline. A bloodline that I possess.  
I reel my mind back and return to myself before Rheya’s toxicity can poison my memories and my mind, but when I look upon her face again the cruel, callous First Vampire who manipulated all she met was gone. She was a grieving mother, a broken widow, a very human woman with an aching chasm of pain in her soul that never healed.  
Rheya lifts a trembling hand to me as tears pour over her eyes. Genuine tears, tears that come from somewhere deep inside and without trying to get something from me. Strangely, I feel them stinging my eyes, too.  
Then she grabs me. I tense, ready to lash out, but her hands are gentle. She runs her fingers across my back and locks them around my shoulders, pulling me against her chest. When her face rests beside mine, she doesn’t bare her fangs or poise herself to strike. Rheya... embraces me.  
“My dear Demetrius...” she mutters into my hair. “Ophelia, you’ve given me the most wonderful gift, to hear my love’s voice again. To see him smile...”  
I lean closer into her body. My hands travel to her shoulder blades and rest there, pressed against stray hairs and taut muscles, her arms like a protective field encircling me. Not unlike the squeeze of a boa constrictor.  
“It’s okay,” I whisper against her neck. “I’m here, Rheya. We’re together.”  
“I never would have believed you, if...” She shakes with a small sob.  
I turn my head, resting my cheek against her shoulder as I stroke Rheya’s back. She breathes deep, ragged breaths and her tears fall on me.  
And I finally see Adrian’s eyes reflecting back at me off-stage. I fix my gaze on his, and when I’m certain that he understands, I drop it to the dagger.  
Before I’ve looked back to him, he’s already on the move. His speed has always astounded me, but tonight I can only hope it’s enough.  
Adrian’s feet touch the stage and Rheya’s body tenses. I secure my palms against her back and I press, holding her in my grip as she pulls back. Adrian’s hand grips the hilt of the dagger as he sweeps low. I don’t have to hold her for long, and I doubt I could. Just long enough for Adrian to draw the blade, glistening with slick, black blood.  
Rheya thrusts her palm against my sternum. My breath explodes out of me as I slide back along the stage. But the distraction was enough. It has to be enough. Adrian has the blade high over his head and positioned to strike through her chest...  
But he isn’t moving. He stands in place with his burning red stare boring into Rheya and his muscles flexed mid-swing.  
And Rheya is smiling. Her tear streaks reflect the only light on her face, but they quickly begin to fade as her sharp teeth elongate and her eyes pierce me down to my bones.  
“I see,” she muses. “You must get that manipulative tendency from my side of the family.”  
Rheya rumbles a laugh that echoes in a deep thunder across the faces in the audience seats.  
I draw my breath back as I rush to Adrian’s unmoving side. He doesn’t blink.  
“Let go of him,” I snap, reaching to grab him, to break the hold she has on him. My psychic powers bounce off of him like pebbles on a window pane.  
Before I can touch him, though, Adrian suddenly jerks away with mechanical movements and blurring speed. He levels the dagger toward me, directly between us.  
I shake my head and launch my own fierce glare at Rheya. I feel my canine teeth come to a point. “You can’t make me hurt him, Rheya. I won’t do it.”  
She tilts her head. “Oh, granddaughter, why would you hurt him when he is perfectly capable of hurting himself?”  
Adrian flips the dagger by its pommel and drives the slick blade deep into the center of his chest.  
All I hear is the ringing of my ears as Rheya releases her grip on him. Adrian’s eyes flicker to their natural hue, lingering on me as his face drains of all color. He groans but his voice breaks. He drops to his knees.  
I feel my scream ripping through my throat before I realize I’ve opened my mouth, watching a shower of debris explode along the walls on either side of us. The lights flicker overhead. A thick metal beam hot with the stage light swings against the stage. Darkness plunges over the place as screaming humans scramble against their seats.  
Adrian doesn’t hit the quaking stage. I am under him in an instant, my body thrumming like a struck gong as power sings off of me, collapsing the ceiling and crushing the theater.  
But we are untouched in the rubble and the chaos. Adrian’s head in my hands, his body trembling across my lap. The light of the moon washes over us, glistening in Adrian’s eyes as they search my face.  
“No, Adrian...” my tears splash against our skin, unrelenting as rain. “Please.”  
Adrian lifts a hand to my cheek. His thumb caresses my face, taking tears with it. “Ophelia.”  
“You can’t die, Adrian,” the word leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. “Please, don’t leave me. I love you.”  
“Ophelia,” he says my name again, this time like he’s holding a perfect note.  
Adrian takes one of my hands with his and brings it to his coat pocket. Dangerously close to the gruesome wound oozing red and black blood and the thick blade protruding from it. At first I think to feel for his heartbeat, but I notice something else.  
My hand slips beneath his lapel and into the pocket, and I feel velvet. A box. Adrian’s wavering hand pulls back the top and inside waits a beautiful white gold band studded with perfectly clear diamonds, a red one in the center fixture.  
My chest caves in with a shuddering sob.  
“Take it,” he whispers. His lips have become pale. I kiss them, anyway.  
Part of me hopes that kissing him will be enough, that if I never stop then time will cease. But Adrian’s head droops and we pull away. When his eyes meet mine again, there’s an urgency in them.  
“There’s so much I wanted to do with you, that I wanted to show you. I’m sorry that I won’t be able to.”  
“Don’t say that,” I plead with a voice so soft even I barely hear it.  
“It has been the greatest pleasure of my life to know you. I’m grateful to have loved you while I could.”  
I drag a hand through his hair, straightening it from a muss. I touch my thumbs to the corner of his lips. The veins in his neck pulse black and his breathing comes in ragged gasps. There isn’t much more time.  
“Thank you, Adrian,” I press my forehead to his, and we shut our eyes together. “Thank you for everything.”  
He takes in a deep breath, and I feel his mind open up. Time stands still as I enter his thoughts, creating a link that fluctuates deep inside my heart.  
At first, it’s just us. Adrian in his crisp suit, unbloodied, and me in the blouse I wore when we first met. We stand together in the dark. His hands in mine are warm and sure. I open my mouth and I say his name, but no sound comes.  
A pinprick of light forms behind him, turning Adrian to a familiar silhouette as he pulls me closer and presses his lips to mine. His lips are normally so warm and perfectly soft. Now, they are cool to the touch.  
The light swells from a single beam to an all-encompassing glow that surrounds us. And in that light is someone I’ve never met before, yet I still recognize.  
Eleanor. She looks from me to Adrian, a warm and serene smile on her face. And in her arms is a bundle that wriggles and uncovers itself. Charles, round and gentle, and the spitting image of his father.  
Adrian’s eyes settle on them and his jaw slacks. Tears well in his eyes as he takes a step forward. But he stops short, our hands still linked together. Like an anchor that moors him in the docks, or keeps him from straying in the night.  
Kano’s voice sounds in my memory, and his advice. Sometimes, the best action to take is no action.  
Like an anchor that keeps a boat from meeting the horizon.  
Adrian’s eyes search me as I look at Eleanor and Charles. The baby bursts into a wide smile, his arms stretch toward us and make grabbing motions. I can’t hear his laughter, but I feel it. I meet Adrian’s gaze once more and give him the best smile I can muster. He returns with a dazzling one of his own.  
And I let go.  
I return to my own mind in a rush of fury and pain. My powers press against my skin, and I feel like it spreads through the air from my pores.  
Rubble moves as someone rises through the broken pieces of the opera stage. I feel Rheya’s strained breath as though they are against my skin, tingling the back of my neck before I ever turn to find her.  
The power within her bubbles, rising up to stitch together her wounds and draw light to her eyes. But that light fades like a candle flame compared to the sun I feel in my chest.  
Images, faces, memories pass through my mind’s eye: all the death around us, the audience who didn’t escape the destruction I caused. Nicole. Liv. Adam. Marcel and his party guests. Elias. The members of the Order of the Dawn and Xenocrates. Bishop and the Unchained. Jameson. Griff. Priya. Lester. The Baron. Takeshi. Adrian. So much death all around me, so many I knew and so many I didn’t.  
“Your powers come from death, Rheya,” my voice is like a hiss of steam and just as hot. “You siphon death to feed your empty soul. But you’re not the only one who’s been surrounded by death. You’ve never even died!”  
My feet lift from the floor as I turn and pull back a fist. The momentum carries me soaring through the air and connects with the side of Rheya’s head. She flies and twists around herself as she crashes along the rubble.  
Rheya skidds to her feet and drags her hand across a spot of blood on her lip. “You think so? I’ve died every day since humans took my daughter from me.”  
Rheya throws herself into a flying kick that connects with my gut before I can register her movement. I collide with a support beam, cracking and bringing it down around me. I grit my teeth and narrow my eyes at Rheya through the dust as it settled. I crack my neck. “You said that none of us were like you, Rheya. But you were wrong. I’m just like you.”  
Rheya appears before me, launching punches and slicing through the air with claw-like fingers, but somehow I predict her every move like her thoughts are my own. I weave through the blows and let her hands slash at the wood and stone around me as I get my feet under me and push off.  
I drive her into the ground and launch the debris around us sky high. Rheya kicks up, knocking me up and back, careening through the air.  
She meets me at all sides, knocking me around like a puppet with her blows. My vision flashes red, then white, then red again until I twist midair and lash out with my hand. It wraps around Rheya’s fist and for a moment, her confidence dissolves to shock.  
With a few deft spins I build enough momentum to hurl Rheya back to the stage and drive it to splinters with her body. I follow through the air and connect to her prone form with knees, elbows, fists, claws. The pain and flurry of our battle blurs my vision, trading blows back and forth as we ricochet around the remnants of the opera stage.  
Until Rheya gets her claws around my head, lifting me up by my face and squeezing my skull. I feel my psychic abilities press against my bones and keeping them up.  
Rheya’s burning red eyes snare my gaze and hold me. “You believe your powers equal mine?” She spits on my chest. “You are but a foolish child playing at power. It’s impossible for a vampire barely a few months old to have seen the same pain and death as I. I am the First Vampire, blood of my blood or not, you are still just a half-breed!”  
She jerks her hand away and shouts as pain lances through her palm. Pain that shot from my eyes into reality, through her skin and burning.  
Rheya drops us to the ground and backs away a few steps, her eyebrows pinched and her face snarled in fear.  
“You’re right, I’m not as strong as you,” I admit, my breaths filling my chest and inflating me. Light spills from my face, curling in wisps in the corners of my vision. “But I don’t want to be. That’s the difference. You did all of this because of what they took from you, but you’ve taken all of that and more from your own blood!”  
A lash of psychic light crashes against Rheya, thick tendrils of it spreading from me and striking her everywhere. Deep gashes bleed and bleed, healing and reopening with every hit.  
Every time the lights hit her, flashes of Rheya’s memories appear to me. In her mindscape I find her deepest fears, the same way that Kano had led me to mine.  
And there, I see Rheya knelt before a massive Demetrius, her body clothed in torn rags and ashes spread over her face. Demetrius stares down at her with the endless void of unfeeling death inside of him, and Iola lays across his arms.  
“Do you wonder why Iola never found you, even though she lived?” My voice seems to ehco.  
Before me on the stage, Rheya trembles with rage and fear. She breathes with flared nostrils, like a caged tiger. “Stop it.”  
“Iola was the first Bloodkeeper, Rheya. You know what Bloodkeepers do.”  
In Rheya’s mind, Iola’s lifeless body turns to her.  
“No,” Rheya snarled.  
“Bloodkeepers retain the memories of vampires, Rheya, vampires like you. Iola saw every kill you made, heard their screams, tasted their blood.”  
“No!”  
In Rheya’s mind, Iola and Demetrius turn to stone and begin to crack.  
“She knew who you really were every time you mercilessly killed just to get your revenge. She knew everything. And so did her children, her children’s children.”  
Rheya lets out a cry of real anguish as the statues in Rheya’s mind crumble around her, tumbling in pieces that shatter her mental state as though breaking her bones.  
The world around me hums with power, the very air charged as every atom responds to my mind. I feel for the blood: the dark, sick sap of the Tree of Death. Moving it with my mind, the blood of Demetrius weaves through the air and forms a thick blade that hovers just inches from my hand.  
Rheya, unhinged and unrestrained, charges me with a war cry. But I deflect her as easily, casting her against a wall that still stands. She struggles against invisible bonds, but my strength comes from the death she saw, the death I’ve seen, and combines in me as a descendant of both the First Vampire and the Bloodkeeper.  
Using Demetrius’ blood as a blade I slash through Rheya’s neck. She draws a quick, choking gasp as the blood spatters against the ground.  
Her power fades. It slips out of my senses, out of my mind. Her memories evaporate like mist in an early morning and the psychic bonds that hold her drop away. Rheya’s body concedes to gravity, dispersing to ashes that catch on the wind and gather in an undignified heap inches from a spattered pool of black blood.  
I land on my feet. My legs buckle as my own weight feels like holding the world. I collapse.  
I’m woken with the moon still in the sky by Lily shaking me at my side.  
“You’re okay!” She bursts, pulling me against her in a tight bear-hug.  
I grunt.  
Lily gasps and releases me. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry! We heard the Opera fall apart, and we got here as soon as we could.”  
“But it looks like you had everything under control.” Kamilah strides into view. She offers her hand to me and I take it as she helps me to stand.  
I wobble, a little, feeling weak and unwell. “Sorry, I...”  
Jax puts his hands to my sides. “Don’t worry, I got you.”  
“You look like you need a drink,” Lily says with a playful smirk. “Celebratory blood cocktails!”  
Over my shoulder, I hear something moving. I jump and whirl around, hands extended and ready to fight as though Rheya could possibly still live... But it’s only Gaius. He sits with his hands in his lap and stares down at the pile of ashes that once was the First Vampire.  
I let go of Kamilah and they watch me go to him.  
Gaius doesn’t turn his head as I approach. “I don’t think I’ll be participating in the festivities, if that’s alright with you.”  
It’s a bitter string of words, laced with pain and guilt.  
“What will you do now?”I ask before I register that I’ve thought the words.  
He scoffs. “Well, as the oldest living vampire, I suppose I’ll lord over you all. How’s that?”  
I cross my arms.  
“Sorry, poor timing for a joke.”  
“You killed me once, Gaius,” I say. “I can’t forgive you for that. But if you want to try and make it up to me and everyone else you’ve hurt, then you have the rest of your life to start trying. Or, you can disappear and wait until I come to return the favor.”  
“She’s gone, Ophelia,” he says. “I have nothing more to live for besides my atonement.”  
For a few moments, silence stretches between us. With a sigh, I figure he’s done talking and turn to rejoin my friends.  
“I heard what you said,” his words rise from the ashes. “You were wrong, you know.”  
I pause. When I look back at Gaius, his wet eyes meet mine.  
“You said you were just like her. But you’re not. You might be her descendant, but you made your own choices. You took vengeance, not revenge. I just... wanted you to know that.”  
I nod, but can’t bring myself to smile at him. By the time I’ve rejoined my friends, Gaius has disappeared.  
Lily and Jax pull me into a tight hug, and I have some of my strength back. Lily grabs Kamilah by the shoulder and pulls her into the embrace as well. For a while, we stand there and relish each other’s warmth, the familiarity of our close bonds together.  
Then Kamilah pulls back, her brows furrowed in question. “Ophelia... Where is Adrian?”

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a kudos if you enjoyed!


End file.
